This invention relates generally to passenger aircraft loading systems.
An ability to rapidly load and unload passengers from commercial aircraft is a growing concern to commercial airlines and airport management. An increase in commercial airline use by the traveling public places more stress on the finite capabilities of airports to handle increasing passenger traffic. To handle this increasing passenger traffic, an increasing number of arriving and departing aircraft are scheduled to operate at airports having a limited number of available jetways. To better move the increasing passenger traffic with more aircraft requires a significant improvement in unloading and loading passengers at the aircraft jetways, thereby reducing the disembarking and embarking times of the aircraft.
The time to unload passengers from an arriving aircraft and then load the same aircraft for its subsequent departing flight is referred to as airplane xe2x80x9cturn time.xe2x80x9d Airlines and airport management are concerned with achieving shorter turn times so that airplanes can depart quickly. Shorter turn times allow more aircraft to be processed by the finite number of jetways at a given airport.
Reduced turn times are particularly desirable with flights having only a short time available at a particular airport. If the turn time cannot be reduced to match the allotted jetway time, then the airline may fly less cycles for a particular airplane in any given day. This change can lead to non-optimum utilization of airplanes. Alternately, additional airplanes may be needed to satisfy airline objectives of optimizing passenger arrival and departure times. Changes in number of cycles per day or the number of airplanes required significantly impacts the amount of revenue that can be generated.
Airlines have explored various ways to reduce turn times. One attempt to reduce airplane turn time is through sectional loading or selective loading by zones. In selective loading by zones, passengers are boarded in seat groupings wherein the passengers sitting in forward or aft sections first. Thereafter, sections of the plane that are aft of the forward sections and forward of the aft sections are loaded, filling seats closer to the entry door.
Although sectional loading helps, to a small degree, in reducing the time to load an airplane with passengers, sectional loading cannot be optimized beyond levels achievable through a single airplane door. All passengers load onto an airplane single file through a single door. Furthermore, zone loading applies only to passengers embarking on a plane. Zone loading has no application in decreasing the time for disembarking passengers. All passengers leave the airplane single file through a single airplane door. Thus, as most airport jetways are designed to direct passengers through a single door, turn times become constrained by the physical limitations of how fast passengers can transit through a single door opening.
Airplane turn times can be reduced if more than one door of the aircraft is used in unloading and loading passengers. Studies involving a Boeing 757-200 aircraft having 236 seats demonstrate that turn times are significantly reduced when both airplane doors were used for loading and unloading. The results show that using doors 1 and 2 to load and unload passengers reduces the turn time by approximately 5 minutes over using door 1 alone. In addition, using doors 1 and 2 with an additional zone loading procedure results in a further reduction in turn time of 17 minutes over the single door 1 loading and unloading. This decrease in turn time substantially cuts the turn time in half over the conventional door 1 procedure.
Since most airports utilize single channel jetways that lead to a single airplane door, there is an unmet need to provide a means for single channel jetways to simultaneously attach to more than one airplane door, thereby reducing airplane turn times.
The present invention allows an existing single corridor jetway to be converted to a multi-corridor jetway. Each corridor leads to a separate aircraft door. This permits passengers to select different entry routes to the plane, thereby reducing the time-consuming loading and unloading procedures of single-file passing through a single airplane door. By simultaneously loading and unloading passengers through two or more doors rather than one, a desired reduction in airplane turn times is achieved.
The present invention is a mobile platform for transferring passengers between a single corridor passageway of an airport and an aircraft having a plurality of doors on a side of the aircraft. The mobile frame is substantially rectangular and has a plurality of vertical adjustable supports. A first room is mounted on the mobile frame. The first room has a first portal for docking with a doorway of the single corridor passageway of the airport. A second room is slidably receivable within and extendable from the first room. The second room has a first vestibule that extends substantially normally from the second room. The first vestibule defines a portal for docking with a first aircraft door. A third room is attached to the first room. The third room has a second vestibule that extends substantially normally from the third room. The second vestibule defines a third portal for docking with a second aircraft door. A positioning assembly is used to slidably extend the second and third rooms from the first room and to slidably retract the second and third rooms into the first room such that the second and third portals align with the first and second aircraft doors.